McKenna Davis

McKenna Davis is a Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute, where she leads the Institute’s Nature-based Solutions (NbS) team. She brings over 15 years of experience at the science–policy–society nexus, advancing the mainstreaming of inclusive NbS, strengthening biodiversity governance, and helping close implementation and financing gaps for nature protection. Her work bridges science, policy, and practice to mobilise public and private action for ecosystem restoration, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable urban transformation. Her expertise spans NbS, green infrastructure, and ecosystem restoration, covering (co-)design, implementation, monitoring, financing, scalability, policy integration, and standards. McKenna’s research critically examines how NbS—particularly in urban contexts—can build climate resilience, ensure equity, and avoid greenwashing to jointly address the biodiversity and climate crises. A native English speaker fluent in German, she combines technical, governance, and financial perspectives in her work.

McKenna currently works on the GoNaturePositive! project, where she mapped EU and global policy and cooperation landscapes to support the development of roadmaps towards a nature-positive economy, and helps design metrics and governance models linking biodiversity outcomes with blended finance. Within „Natürlich Klimaanpassung!”, she supports municipalities in planning and implementing NbS for climate adaptation through locally tailored, participatory approaches to overcome institutional and financial barriers.

She contributes her expertise to German, European, and international research, policy, and innovation agendas as an expert in the Biodiversa+ Enlarged Stakeholder Board and BiodivClim Knowledge Hub on NbS, an Expert Peer Reviewer of the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Cities, and a Expert Reviewer for the WHO report Nature-based Solutions and Health. McKenna also led the European Commission publication “Co-creating Nature-based Solutions with Commonly Excluded Stakeholders” and supported the High Level EU–Latin America Policy Dialogue on NbS. She engages in EU Nature Credits discussions, advocating for high-integrity, non-offsetting, and just approaches. 

Her policy expertise is cross-sectoral and spans from municipal to EU and global levels, focusing in particular on the EU Nature Restoration Regulation, Birds and Habitats Directives, Biodiversity Strategy for 2030, and Adaptation Strategy alongside related funding instruments, as well as the Global Biodiversity Framework. In Germany, she has supported the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation (BfN) around biodiversity funding mechanisms, the National Restoration Plan, and in developing guidance for Urban Nature Plans, as well as the German Environment Agency (UBA) on NbS for climate protection and natural climate adaptation.

Previous work included coordinating the INTERLACE project, bringing together 21 partners across Europe and Latin America to restore urban ecosystems, and led development of the Urban Governance Atlas, an interactive database of 250 policy instruments supporting urban NbS. Earlier projects include e.g. NATURVATION,  CLEVER Cities, NICHES, and ENABLE and work for the European Environment Agency’s Topic Centre on Biological Diversity. Topics included NbS governance,collecting good practices, societal preferences, ecosystem services, and the development of a NbS decision-support tool, MOOC and textbook.